


Drinking those moments

by distractionpie



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Other, Solidarity, Steve might be Bi, but he's not a monsterfucker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19718842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distractionpie/pseuds/distractionpie
Summary: Robin never planned on exposing so much of the truth of herself to Steve and when everything has died down she decides to test how things really stand with Steve and the limits of their newfound friendship. The results are better than she'd feared but far different from what she'd ever expected.





	Drinking those moments

It lingers.

Mostly, things go back to normal, or as normal as they can be now that Robin knows about monsters and government conspiracies and has to find a new job because the mall ‘burned down’.

But Robin can never forget for too long before it comes crashing back -- Steve knows about her.

She’s never told _anyone_ and now King Steve too-cool-for-school Harrington knows that Robin likes girls.

Sure, that’s kind of small time compared to Russian spies and monsters, and honestly, Steve isn’t very much like the guy she remembers from school at all, but it’s still a lot for Robin. At least when she was dealing with the end of the world, everybody else was terrified right along with her.

But nobody is going to call in the army or blow Robin’s demons up with fireworks and so she worries.

It’s not that Steve’s given any indication he’s going to make a problem of it, he didn’t freak out at the time and he hasn’t even brought her confession up since. She wonders sometimes, if he doesn’t remember or if he thought it was the influence of the drugs, although she remembers everything that happened that night and that the drugs make them both high and honest but not hallucinate.

But summer cools into fall and Steve is acting, well, not exactly like before, not know she knows about monsters and conspiracies and how he acquired the pack of children that all treat him like an indulgent big brother (and she’s a little pissed that he never warned her how weird he knew this town was when she first offered to chip in with translation for their Russian conspiracy; but she supposes she wouldn’t have believed him, and knowing now is better than being ignorant, and she was really, truly bored out of her mind at Scoops Ahoy), but like he’d never expressed any romantic interest in her and she hadn’t intoxicatedly spilled the beans on her interests being similar to his in all the wrong ways for that to work.

She’d been happily leaving it alone, but Steve had caught her doing the time-warp while she was on backroom clean-up one evening and thought he was busy out front and pestered her until she’d told him what it was and then been totally confused by her attempts to explain so in the end she’d used her video store employee privileges to order in a copy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show from Indianapolis. Honestly, she’s not sure about showing it to Steve because there was a huge gulf of difference between him being fine with her admitting a high school crush on Tammy and her introducing him to aliens from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania. But watching a VHS was probably a better way to find the point he’d freak out at than waiting for something to force the topic in real life.

It takes a while to find a day they can watch it, her parents aren’t away as often as his but she wants the homefield for this, but in the end he’s curled up on her parents couch with popcorn and M&Ms between them while he watches the movie and Robin watches him with trepidation.

But the reaction she was worried about never comes.

Steve alternates between wide eyed and frowning as the movie unfolds, but she knows him well enough to recognise that his looks are more of confusion (and the show is a lot to take in) than any freaking out at the moments she’d wanted to test being too far for him.

When the credits roll, he looks down at the snacks between them, then back up at Robin and says, “You didn’t put something in these right? Like, that all just happened.”

“That all just happened,” Robin assures him, something warming inside of her at the thought that Steve’s relaxed reaction when he’d found out about her might have been all real and not just a product of the drugs and her revelation paling in comparison to more immediate problems. “I’m not sure how pot popcorn would even be possible.”

“Hey, just checking.”

For a moment, it seems like nothing has changed, like maybe she’s been overthinking this whole time and the blissful indifference with which Steve has handled Robin’s biggest secret really it as simple as he makes it seem.

But then Steve leans back against the couch and sighs. “Hey, Robin, can I… I’m gonna tell you about something,” he says, and Robin’s breath catches because there’s a seriousness in his tone that makes her suspect that maybe Steve is having a reaction to the movie after all.

“Yeah?” she answers, faux-casual as M&Ms start to melt in her suddenly sweaty palm.

“I… right after, before things really settled down and got back to normal, I… well I told you about how hard it was to get over Nancy,” he says.

Robin nods, apprehension curling tight in her chest. Steve’s her friend and friends talk about this kind of thing, but Steve has also _liked_ her and she’d told him why that wasn’t going to fly and he’d seemed to accept that but now he’s talking about getting over girls and the dread is rising despite her high hopes for him.

“--And I mean, I don’t know, she and Jonathan, it happened fast. I mean, _really_ fast after Nancy and I broke up. Not that I’m saying anything about Nancy, I wouldn’t, I trust her and anyway she dumped me so she can do what she wants--”

True, but Robin really doesn’t know why watching this movie of all movies would get Steve spilling his guts about his ex-girlfriend.

“—but Nancy saying everything was bullshit made me keep thinking all these bullshit thoughts, about how things would be if I didn’t have to think about any of that bullshit. You know?”

Steve pauses then, staring at her intently like he really expects Robin to understand where he’s going with this.

Robin blinks just at him. That was… a lot of bullshit. She’s not sure where Steve thinks he’s going with all this, but she wishes he would hurry and get there so that at least she’d know what she’s dealing with. “I… sure Steve,” she offers, in case it helps him to his point, and it must do because he smiles like she’s said something that actually means something.

“So like, Nancy was with me, and that seemed like it worked until Nancy decided it didn’t,” Steve continues, “And then she was with Jonathan and I guess that was working too. But, like, I dunno, when all the shit was happening, with the labs and the tunnels and shit, Nancy and Jonathan were together then I was helping Dustin with his disgusting dema-dog thing, but the first time…”

“What happened the first time?” Robin asks. Though honestly she’d take a clearer explanation of what happened any of the times. She’d got bits and pieces out of him after the monster showed up and Dustin and Steve admitted they’d seen it before, but she’s never had the story told properly and in the immediate aftermath she’d been too freaked out to care and then it had seemed like it was too late to ask.

“I mean, I was outta the loop for most of it. Jonathan was involved because of Will going missing and I guess Mike dragged Nancy in, or maybe it was because of what happened to Barb,” Steve gives a weird little grimace, and Robin had heard when they’d declared Barb wasn’t missing but dead and that Hawkins' lab had something to do with it, but up until now she hadn’t even thought about how it tied into all the monster shit and it sends a shiver through her because, holy fuck, an unpopular girl taken by monsters and forgotten about suddenly seems far too close to her. “Anyway, I fought with Jonathan and Tommy H. and Carol were dicks to Nancy, and now Nancy is with Jonathan I kind of wonder if I was right to think something was going on back then but it doesn’t matter because I was a dick about it so I went to straighten things out and that was when the fucking monster, the mind-fucker things I think, honestly I still can’t keep on top of all the details of the dungeons and dragons names the kids keep giving shit, anyway it showed up but we kicked it’s ass and that was pretty cool.”

Robin sighs. Steve is rambling and honestly, she’d kind of like more information about the monsters under the town but she doesn’t care about his drama with Nancy now it seems less like an uncomfortable lead up to him once again bringing up the idea of him having feelings for _her_. “Is there a point to all this?” she interjects.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m getting to it,” Steve grumbled. “Fuck, wait like one more minute. So, we worked well together. All three of us I mean, fighting monsters. And like, me and Nancy, we worked well together dating, or, I thought we did and she seemed like she thought we didn’t until she didn’t but that had to be partly because of all the other messed up shit that was going on messing us up…”

“ _Steve_ …”

“ _Robin_ , fuck, you’re so impatient,” Steve bitches. “I’m saying Nancy and Jonathan are dating now and that seems like it’s working out pretty well for them, but if the three of us worked out pretty well fighting monsters and they worked out dating and Nancy and I worked out dating then maybe we could all make something work out.”

“Steve,” she laughs, gleeful just imagining the strange situation he’s conjured. “You’re making it sound like you wanted Nancy to date both of you, like you’re reverse Mormons or something.”

She’s teasing but the way Steve’s face screws up makes her suddenly realise that he’s not just not expressing himself well or messing with her. “I mean… god if even you think it’s dumb then I guess it’s a good thing they went sort of off on their own thing when everything calmed down,” and he’s laughing it off but it feels wrong, like he’d been sharing something honest with her without the aid of Russian drugs and now he’s snapped back to that ill-fitting façade of high school king but the fake smile doesn’t change the way his eyes are darting between her and the TV and Robin thinks back to all the partner swapping they’d just watched and wonders if that had spoken to Steve in the same way that other relationships in the film had spoken to her, which wasn’t what she’d been intending or expecting but was still an interesting thing to learn about him she supposes.

“Steve, is that really what were you thinking?” she says, hesitantly. “I mean, we’re not in Utah. Were you really gonna go there?”

“It’s not like I didn’t know it was unrealistic,” Steve huffs. “I mean, it’s Hawkins. It was just a thought. And… and I wasn’t really thinking about Mormons so much as, y’know, Byers can be pretty cool when he wants to be, and it was, when we were kicking ass, it was because it was the three of all of us that worked.”

He trails off in a mumble, but Robin still hears it. Steve really had thought about starting something _both_ of them. And not just in a both of the boys getting their shot with Nancy kind of way. And Robin doesn’t care much about Steve’s history with Nancy Wheeler, but if he’s saying that he considered dating Jonathan, well, all his stumbling build-up suddenly makes so much more sense and her laughter feels misplaced now.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

Robin is thinking but Steve takes a deep breath then carries on, sounding urgent as he adds, “I mean, it was… Nancy was at the centre of it all and I loved her so I didn’t think too hard about the rest of the details, just that it seemed like it would work, so why look for deeper meanings?” From the corner of her eye she can see him shaking his head, rueful. “But then they were doing their own thing and I knew it wasn’t gonna work with Nancy except I still kept thinking about…” he doesn’t finish, but Robin doesn’t need him too.

She reaches out, pressing one melted food colouring stained hand over his and says, “I know.”

For a moment they sit, side by side in silent understanding.

Then Robin’s racing thoughts catch up to her mouth.

“Holy shit though, Steve, seriously,” she blurts out, “I mean, _those two_?” She guesses after what she saw from them at the mall that Steve is right about Nancy being more than a priss and that there’s something more to Jonathan than the stuffy loner who always acted like he was too smart for the cool kids but too cool for the kind of people Robin hung out with, but _still._

“I know, I know, it was a dumb thought,” Steve says, which wasn’t really what Robin meant, even though she is pretty sure it was always a doomed idea it was still brave of him to have it. “But, I mean, I… everything was so messed up with Nancy and the fucking monsters--”

She lets out a giggle. She can’t help it. “First Wheeler _and_ Byers and now fucking _monsters_. Damn Steve, you’re getting more ambitious by the minute,” she commends, and then laughs harder at the redness in his face.

“Shut up!” he says, but he’s laughing too now, grabbing a handful of popcorn and flinging it at her face. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I know, I know,” she says, though it’s hard to hold her laughter at bay. “But I mean, c’mon. Kudos to your general concept but Nancy and Jonathan are such stick in the muds.”

“You know they aren’t,” Steve protests. “They’ve fought monsters.”

“We’ve fought monsters,” she counters. “Your bizarro collection of middle schoolers have fought monsters. That does not make them any more fun. I mean, Nancy and Jonathan? They probably go on study dates.”

The slightly embarrassed yet knowing look on Steve’s face is an immediate confirmation of her theory and she accidentally knocks the bag of M&Ms in her amusement. Poor fucking Steve with his taste as horrible as his game. She says as much.

“Oh, says the girl who crushed on Tammy Thompson,” Steve snarks back and, okay, Robin isn’t entirely over that crush but Steve also made some fair points about the unfortunate relationship between Tammy’s dreams and talent level that have made it a little easier for Robin to stop idealising the girl who was never going to look twice at her anyway.

“It’s not my fault Hawkins sucks,” she defends. It’s not like there are whole lot of options here for her except crushing on people who would never return her interest. And for Steve there aren’t a whole lot of options when it comes to people who’s view of him isn’t already irrevocably tainted by his former status as King of Hawkins' high and (mysterious to most) fall from grace.

She’s quietly wishing for years of to get out of this town, not on some pipe dream of being a Nashville country singer, but just to somewhere bigger and better and more modern. Somewhere it doesn’t take three weeks of waiting to get a cassette of something a little more exciting than E.T or Flashdance and she doesn’t have to hide the case in her bag in case someone sees it and make a fuss. Of course, her parents can’t exactly afford to help her out by paying with things and they don’t approve of the bad influences of city living anyway, and there’s no way she could afford to make the move or try for college on the shitty wages from Scoops Ahoy or the video rental store.

If she had a roommate though, somebody who might also benefit from the more anonymous and cosmopolitan lifestyle a city offered and won’t care about things the Robin is used to keeping secret, well, maybe then all kinds of things would be possible.

For now though, she flings popcorn and laughs as Steve gets a kernel stuck in his hair and freaks out far more than she’s ever seen him do over a real problem, and knows that at the very least, she’s not alone.

**Author's Note:**

> I finished S3 today and was immediately inspired to write this, so it's very much just what poured out of me presented unedited. Steve and Robin's friendship just fills me with sunshine.
> 
> So as far as I can find out RHPS was out by the time the show is set, but only in limited theatrical run with a VHS release coming several years later. But I figure if folks can roll with the upside-down they can roll with a bit of fudging of VHS release dates.
> 
> Sadly, this fic was not sponsored by M&Ms.


End file.
